START-UP WE ARE THE I By Alison
Innovation is one of the key drivers of economic growth, and an a for. I spoke to three innovative start ups in the high growth dig
Samba Mobile
Founded in 2010, Samba Mobile offers users free mobile broadband via a dongle or SIM card in return for the user watching a number of high quality video ads. CEO and founder Ben Atherton tells me he wanted to find a better way of allowing people and brands to interact, with the company now boasting 7,000 users and seven employees.
They have also just secured a second round of angel investment, sourced primarily via management team contacts. But how well served does Atherton think UK start ups are in this high growth sector?
Disposable Instruments
Medica
Ben Atherton, CEO and Founder of Samba Mobile
“There’s definitely a funding gap for pre-money and early stage post money” says Ben. “Also, I think ‘digital’ is too big a sector. I don’t know how big the ‘digital economy’ is but ecommerce alone is worth £59bn I think. If innovation is the engine of growth, then digital is driving a lot of innovation. It’s not an industry sector, more of an enabler for the entire economy.
“There’s so much potential but very little professional support. The UK could probably produce another 250,000 engineering graduates every year and they could all get jobs, but where’s the joined up strategy?”
Despite Ben’s skepticism, he has praised the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), but with banks not lending, believes further access to funding is necessary to foster growth and encourage entrepreneurs. “SME bank lending decisions are made by a computer; you can’t hope to grow new businesses on a theoretical model; you need experienced bank managers.”
One constant criticism is that the UK excels at innovation, but performs poorly when it comes to the commercialisation of new products and services. Ben says: “I think commercialisation has a lot to do with embedded powerful distribution and marketing capability. Plenty of global companies are doing that very well from the UK, so the gap is probably further down the scale. I think if you look at the data, UK business owners sell out quicker than the US, possibly because the opportunities to cash are fewer, which may have something to do with the lack of scaling.”
Information
www.sambamobile.com 40 entrepreneurcountry
Founded in 2007, the company supplie complete sterile procedure packs an individual packed disposable medic instruments. Founder Patrick Chaney sai “The inspiration for the business came fro a friend of mine, a podiatrist, who flagge up a potential niche in the market. I wa informed that the NHS was going to requi all podiatrists to provide a full traceabili trail for the use of all multi-use instrumen or revert to the more cost-effective singl use disposable instruments. That’s when saw a business opportunity emerging.”
The company employs eight members of s His biggest challenge starting up was the surrounding the submission of the neces tender for new business in the healthcare
He said: “In order to tender for the NHS Su merely submitting a 126 page document r a supplier. Large companies and organis start-ups and SMEs and there is far too m the end for many small businesses.” In th that he owned and invested £600,000 of h ground. He also sought professional advi certification process and also invested in
“Advice was expensive and some of the “For example, I was told to outsource ev packing. We travelled to the Far East to fin that this wouldn’t work, and to outsource expensive, so we took it in-house and d instincts, I wouldn’t have spent extra fund
Information www.disposablemedicalinstru
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